You wouldn’t put a player in just to fill a position, but that’s what they did.

Movie, Turay is just there as a fullback. Not every year used a fullback, but he’s the beat fullback we had as far as impact.
I’m with you as far as Manzanares is concerned. Pretty close call but Manzanares was always the guy other teams focused on and he still got the yardage.

We we’re desperate for running backs and he didn’t get the call so that says something. I think he has speed similar to Nemane Modise, last years #3 running back

we know they weren’t recruited by anyone, and we haven’t seen anything from them.

We need another running back. We haven’t recruited anyone playable after the Thomas & Gilliam class in 2017, and Thomas will be coming off an injury.

Biggs was his, Socher’s first QB, that’s the context under discussion. Biggs was the QB for the miracle win, took the team to the Boardwalk bowl in Atlantic City, and passed for 400 yards there.
Prior to Biggs QB we were not a conference power, his era started the string of championships.

On the basis of what he’s done to elevate the program he has to rank up there with Bob Biggs as a quarterback.
Biggs really started the winning tradition at the D2 level, hopefully that might be said of Maier at the D1 level.

How are we evaluating these guys, as college players or pro prospects?
If as college players Maier is right up there.
As a physically gifted player you have to go with O’Brien, which is why he was drafted in the first round.

In a sense we saw that already in 2012 when he was co-offensive coordinator under Biggs

Choate made the observation that we often utilize two tight ends to keep defenders in their base defense and then we execute “11 personnel” plays, in other words one tight end plays.

I think if we match them in physicality we win.

That was Hawkins first game at Colorado. That must have been a horrible Colorado team, Montana State followed that win off with a loss to Chadron State the next week.

Worth noting that the 2006 MSU team had beaten Dan Hawkins’ Colorado team 19 - 10.

I think we may now have our best offensive linemen starting. Amoah may have earned starting role over Lamson, who didn’t start but played. Richardson was back, as was Pettek.
We started the PSU game with two tight ends for the third straight game.

Jeff Choate is correct in saying that our big offensive games correlate with our getting the run game going.
This is a huge game for us even if we ignore the playoff picture. Our win percentage against the traditional big sky powers hasn’t been good, we need to beat one of them this season, and Montana State is our last opportunity.

When a program produced article on August 15th refers to a sophomore as
“Coach **** “ one suspects they knew.
I get not making a news release about it, but how about just leaving him out of the season preview article?
The school didn’t do the kid any favors by letting the information become public via the Cal football coverage on the week of our game.

Having a story about the linebackers and reporting what a great job the ineligible player was doing as a leader but not revealing he was ineligible was a little beyond not highlighting his ineligibility. It was deceptive.

Maybe the excessively high expectations would have been tempered if the school and media covering the team had not hidden the fact that a key linebacker was academically ineligible.
Lack of success in recruiting running backs has not enabled the overcoming of injury to one of our two proven backs.
Th Aggies aren’t as physical as Weber was In 2017 and 2019 and Eastern Washington was last year and aren't making apparent progress in that area.

It seems that we lost one offensive linemen, Pettek in the NDSU game, and now another Richardson before the Weber game.
Ford, was apparently making his first start at guard at NFSU in place of Martin, a decision I assume was based on merit. When Pettek went down, Martin took over at center. Martin had played that position throughout 2017, but was injured in first game 2018. So we should not have suffered too much from that.
What’s the story with Riley Gallant, who started lots of games for us including two last year but just a name on the roster this year?

Ford started all games after Conner Pettek was injured.
Ford first started against NDSU, replacing Will Martin. Martin then went back to center after Pettek was injured in that game.